Playing a Piano Piece

In Relief Society a couple of weeks ago, the teacher was giving a lesson on trying to perfect ourselves.  I had a friend of another faith ask me about that once - "Is it true that LDS people want to try to be perfect?"  Yes, we do.  But we realize that it will take millenia.  It will take longer than this earthly life.  But eventually, we want to be like our Heavenly Father, who is perfect.  And that's what he wants of us.

Anyways, we were talking about the things that hinder us from perfection.  Which is something that occupies my mind a lot - "How am I ever going to become a patient person?"  "When am I going to kick my swearing habit?"  "When am I going to kick my Coke-drinking habit?"  "When am I going to hold Family Home Evening every single Monday without a hitch?"  I worry a lot that I'm falling way below the mark.

There are things that I think that I've finally overcome and am doing really well at.  It took me years to stop watching rated-R movies, but now I'm not even tempted to rent them.  And it took a long time to get to this point.  So someday I hope to reach this point with the things that I still struggle with.

There is this girl in our ward who I just adore.  Her name is Aimee.  She is very intelligent and soft-spoken.  And she plays the piano beautifully.  She has more patience than anyone I know.  I just really look up to her.  Anyways, she raised her hand and made a comment about this concept of perfecting ourselves that I liked so much that I wanted to put up here.  I don't ever want to forget it.

She said that a seminary teacher years before taught her class that perfecting ourselves is a lot like playing a piano piece.  There are parts that are easy for you - parts that go really smoothly (like me not being tempted anymore to watch rated-R movies), and then there are those parts that you have to work on over and over and over again (like me losing my patience with my kids). 

That really resonated with me.  I took piano (only for a couple of years), so I understand that concept of certain passages being easy and others needing lots of work. 

Another lady pointed out, also, that we aren't trying to become Stepford Wives.  She said that we are trying to become the best version of ourselves.  And someone else suggested that we all are playing different songs.

I don't know.  I just wanted to write about this, because this is basically my online journal, after all.  And I wanted to remember it and look back on it, because I really liked it.